“Fine. Drink away.”

Lin Qing accepted her fate. She was just an employee — could she really manage her boss?

She followed her into the room. Liang Meng was in a poor mood and paid her no attention.

Lin Qing leaned in shamelessly. “President Liang, since you’re determined to drink tonight, why not let me join you?”

Liang Meng didn’t even look up at her. She waved a hand. “There’s liquor in the fridge. Help yourself.”

Lin Qing crouched down beside Liang Meng, hugged her knees, and put on her most shameless expression as she made her request. “President Liang~ since we’re drinking anyway, we might as well drink something good. Treat me to Moutai, and I’ll drink through the night right alongside you!”

“What?”

Liang Meng looked down at her, having never encountered someone so willing to take advantage of a crisis.

“President Liang~~~~~”

Lin Qing wheedled.

Liang Meng was exasperated. What kind of person had she hired?

Wherever she shifted, Lin Qing followed: “President Liang~ this would be my first time ever drinking real Moutai! The one in the coffee doesn’t count, okay.”

Liang Meng moved her leg to shake her off. “Stop it. I’m in a terrible mood.”

“Besides, what’s so great about Moutai.”

From as far back as she could remember, Liang Meng’s encounters with Moutai had all been at business dinners.

At those events, everyone lifted their glasses with great enthusiasm and toasted one another endlessly, while privately calculating how best to help themselves to the other person’s advantage.

The toasts came and went, the words were all mutual flattery and careful probing.

Jiang Han’s study had an entire wall lined with Moutai — every vintage imaginable.

But whenever Liang Meng saw those bottles, the Pavlov reflex kicked in immediately: she felt the tension of being “on duty,” that braced, switched-on feeling of performing at a formal dinner.

“Moutai isn’t worth drinking? Really?!”

Lin Qing was genuinely a little wounded.

An ambrosial liquor she had never so much as tasted — and here was someone who had already grown tired of it.

This world — who exactly was the one living a blindingly wonderful life?

She truly could not understand someone like Liang Meng —

“Boss. You’re brilliant, you’re beautiful, you have an incredible figure — and on top of all that, your family has more money than several lifetimes could spend. Tell me — what on earth do you have to worry about?”

Lin Qing piled on the flattery alongside her probing questions.

Liang Meng stood up and set the clear glass vodka bottle down on the counter with a firm thud.

She didn’t answer directly. Instead, she asked: “Lin Qing — do you actually want to drink Moutai?”

Lin Qing nodded with great enthusiasm.

It wasn’t purely about seizing the moment. She wasn’t that small-minded.

The Lin family had been modest throughout Lin Qing’s childhood — but her mother had always done her best to give her the finest of everything, and had raised her with one consistent teaching: aim high, think big.

But this was an awkward situation, and she had to find some way to get Liang Meng talking.

Bringing up what had happened directly might make Liang Meng shut down completely — but as long as she started talking about anything, Lin Qing had ways of steering the conversation back to what had actually happened.

“Yesterday you might have asked, and I could’ve made it happen.”

Liang Meng took out a makeup remover pad and stood in front of the mirror, beginning to take off her makeup.

Her face had been streaked with tears and was a mess. She was calmer now — light conversation was fine.

“Just slip into Jiang Han’s study and take a bottle. Easy enough.”

“Who’s Jiang Han?” Lin Qing asked.

Liang Meng’s eyes dropped. She didn’t answer.

Six months ago, he had been the person she loved. Now, he was her “brother-in-law.”

Just now, her “brother-in-law” had harassed her. That made him a criminal.

Liang Meng made herself a silent vow: she would never again have the slightest thing to do with this man for the rest of her life.

“Who’s Jiang Han.”

Lin Qing perked up. She had been lying in wait for exactly this kind of opening.

The way Liang Meng’s eyes shifted made it perfectly clear — whatever had set her off tonight was absolutely connected to this person called Jiang Han.

“Drop it,” Liang Meng said, pushing past her. “You’re blocking the mirror.”

Lin Qing stared at Liang Meng, pressed her lips together, thought it over — and decided she had to go back to the Moutai angle.

“President Liang, how about this — the liquor shop downstairs is still open. Transfer me five thousand, and I’ll go pick up a bottle.”

“Lin Qing, that’s completely unreasonable. Do I owe you something? Tonight my mood is terrible — why on earth should I be spending money to satisfy you?”

Liang Meng wasn’t about to indulge her.

Lin Qing crossed her arms, her expression utterly unruffled. She let out a small laugh. “President Liang, it’s not that you can’t afford it — is it?”

A provocation.

“I…”

Liang Meng shot to her feet in indignation, hurling the makeup remover pad into the bin.

She was angry — and anger was proof she’d been hit where it hurt.

Lin Qing pressed steadily forward in their conversation.

It was common knowledge that Liang Meng drew a single yuan in salary from Longquan. Her shares in the company couldn’t be converted into cash on the spot. So here was the first real problem: Liang Meng had been living off the family all these years, and now she had stormed out. What was she going to do for money?

“Who said I can’t afford it?”

Liang Meng wanted to save face.

She pulled out her phone immediately, ready to transfer the money to Lin Qing.

Lin Qing covered her hand.

Liang Meng looked up. Their eyes met.

“The room tonight…”

Lin Qing let the words hang there.

The realization hit Liang Meng like cold water. Her face went from pink to crimson, all the way down to her collar.

She had acted on pure impulse — and out of sheer habit, without a second’s thought, she had checked in using Jiang Han’s hotel VIP points.

She had been so used to it all these years — reaching for Jiang Han’s things the same way she reached for her own, without pausing to think.

Good heavens.

She had walked out of that house because of Jiang Han, making quite a show of pride and self-respect — and she had gone and checked in with the man’s hotel points.

It was like… no. Never mind the comparison. There was nothing more mortifying in the world than this.

Liang Meng wished she could find a crack in the floor eighteen stories deep and disappear into it.

“Lin Qing!”

“What.”

Liang Meng’s sudden raise in volume startled Lin Qing.

“I can’t stay here.”

“If you’re not staying here, where are you going? Back home?” Lin Qing shot back.

“No.”

Going home was absolutely out of the question. Liang Meng was firm on that.

“Is there…” Liang Meng braced both hands on the counter, thinking it over. “…somewhere a bit cheaper? For a hotel?”

“Home Inn, Hanting, 7 Days.”

Lin Qing rattled them off without a second’s hesitation — she knew these places well, having stayed at all of them at various points. When she had taken her mother on vacation and wanted something a little nicer, she had gone as far as Atour, Ji Hotel, and Citadines.

Liang Meng went quiet. She didn’t respond, her expression a picture of distress.

Lin Qing knew full well that her boss had a thing about cleanliness. Sending her to one of those places was roughly equivalent to leaving her out on the street.

“Now you understand why having your own money matters?”

Lin Qing picked up the clear vodka bottle again and handed it to Liang Meng.

This heiress was genuinely baffling — no matter how much money you had, if it wasn’t in your own hands, it didn’t count as yours.

Liang Meng said nothing and took another long sip.

“You earn a single yuan a year, and yet you run yourself ragged like a spinning top. What for?”

Lin Qing settled herself beside her, a note of reproach in her voice.

After a month at Longquan, Lin Qing had seen it clearly enough.

President Liang Xing’s style of governing from behind the curtain was, in essence, a complete and absolute stranglehold over the financial power — within the company and within the family.

Whoever controlled the money controlled the voice. Whoever held the purse strings held the power to squeeze.

Strange as it was, Liang Meng was simply and genuinely uncalculating about that side of things.

“I just want to do well by Longquan.”

Liang Meng held the bottle in both hands, dropped her head forward, her curls falling to hide the resolve in her eyes.

“Beyond that, I haven’t thought too much about other things.”

She was a little tipsy now, and she found herself opening up to Lin Qing: “Lin Qing, do you understand what it’s like to want to do something well — truly well? It’s like being in a state of flow. And when you’re in that state, you really don’t stop to calculate.”

Including, apparently, money.

Lin Qing rolled her eyes to the heavens with profound disdain.

A true heiress, through and through — Liang Meng had eyes only for ideals in full bloom, with no capacity to see the sharp bones of reality beneath.

“I’m not like my sister. Every time my sister Liang Xing sacrifices something for Longquan, she loves to say she’s ‘preserving the legacy our parents built.’ I’ve never had that feeling. Our parents passed away when I was young. My memories of them are already blurry. I want to build a great company — that’s all it is for me, very simply. I, Liang Meng, only feel a sense of mission toward the enterprise itself. As for our parents, who are no longer here…” she trailed off with a slight shrug, “it is what it is.”

This was the first time Lin Qing had learned, through Liang Meng’s own words, that Liang Meng’s parents had also passed away when she was still young.

A faint sense of two people cast adrift in the same sea drifted through Lin Qing’s heart.

“And besides, over all these years, my sister and Jiang Han have never treated me badly.” Liang Meng had found her voice and was sharing freely now, recounting the trust she had once felt so naturally. “My sister has a strange personality in some ways, but one thing she has never done is try to quietly swallow the Liang family inheritance for herself alone. It’s like asking you, Lin Qing — would you ever suspect your own mother of holding back money from you? Of not giving you what’s yours?”

“That I genuinely can’t promise,” Lin Qing said, raising a brow to correct her. “My mother is of the ‘all goes in, nothing comes out’ variety. The money I earn from work — I never hand it over to her. Control over your own money is control over your own freedom.”

Being filial was one thing. Handing every penny to your mother was something else entirely — that was blind devotion. Lin Qing drew a firm line between the two.

“And then there’s Jiang Han.” Liang Meng gave Lin Qing a sideways glance, then lowered her head with something that looked like shame. “All these years, whenever I bought anything, I used the supplementary card he gave me…”

Got it. The supplementary gold card from the domineering CEO.

Liang Meng — then why not just keep using it?!

Lin Qing’s internal voice was practically howling.

“But now…”

“Now what?”

“Now Jiang Han is my ‘brother-in-law,’ and tonight he… ‘harassed’ me.” Liang Meng’s voice dropped noticeably lower.

“What?! What did you just say?!”

This time it was Lin Qing who lost her composure.

She scrambled upright onto the sofa beside her, grabbed Liang Meng by the shoulders, and told her to call the police this instant.

And so the reason for Liang Meng’s breakdown tonight was finally found.

Though it was not at all the reason Lin Qing had expected.

Call the police?

Liang Meng hadn’t considered it.

Lin Qing knew nothing of what lay beneath the surface between them. Going purely on what Liang Meng had told her, the image of Jiang Han that had formed in her mind was “a vile, lecherous, degenerate creep who harassed his wife’s younger sister.”

In the past, whenever Lin Qing heard someone say “any problem money can solve isn’t a real problem,” she had found it unbearably pretentious.

Looking at Liang Meng now — deflated, miserable — she suddenly understood it a little better. Perhaps the troubles of the wealthy and privileged were still troubles, after all.

Liang Meng kept refusing to call the police. Lin Qing assumed it was for the sake of the family’s reputation and didn’t press further.

But her low opinion of Jiang Han — she logged it, deep and permanent.

Standing up for Liang Meng, Lin Qing silently pledged that for the next month, she would curse this worthless man with every foul wish she could conjure, entirely of her own accord.

“I’m going to make a call.”

Lin Qing stood up, walked into the bathroom, and closed the door behind her.

“Lu Zhou, something’s come up. I want to ask your opinion on something — I’d like to bring someone back to your place to stay for the night. Is that alright?”

“Man or woman.”

“My boss, Liang Meng.”

“Man or woman.”

“A woman.”

The audible release of breath from Lu Zhou’s end was unmistakable.

“It’s up to you. I lent you the place — you decide. You don’t need to check with me.”

“Thank you.”

She ended the call, then went back and took Liang Meng’s hand. “Miss Heiress, come rough it at my humble abode for the night. Just now, when I was walking into the hotel, your dear ‘scoundrel brother-in-law’s’ assistant was trailing me from not too far behind!”

“Jiang Han isn’t quite that bad, is he?”

Pathetic as it was, the moment she heard someone speak poorly of Jiang Han, Liang Meng couldn’t help the reflexive urge to defend him.

Lin Qing leveled a withering glare at her.

The message was clear: My dear, please have a little self-respect.

Stockholm syndrome, was it?

Liang Meng came back to herself, flushed with embarrassment. She covered her mouth and, looking a little sheepish, started gathering her things and following Lin Qing out.

Once she had bundled the heiress into a taxi, Lin Qing gave herself a quiet, firm slap on the wrist. Well then. Triple overtime pay, and I’ve done five times the work. No Moutai either, and I’ve gone and given up Lu Zhou’s apartment for the night.

Lin Qing, get a grip.

You’re a salaried employee.

Not a charity.

Lin Qing climbed into the passenger seat and glanced back at Liang Meng — exhausted, a little lost, quietly deflated.

She always managed to bring out Lin Qing’s protective instincts.

Fine, fine. Who said employees couldn’t do charity work?

“Driver, let’s go.”

In the haze of neon lights, Liang Meng leaned against the car window and caught sight of Jiang Han’s assistant, phone in hand, turning to make a call.

Jiang Han.

She felt everything and nothing, all at once.